“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” is the movie equivalent of being patted on the shoulder by an encouraging high school guidance counselor and assured that you are doing just fine. Never mind that the four main characters in this sequel to the first film, a modest 2005 hit, are now college age. Individually and collectively, they are still in high school.

A protective layer of fairy-tale wish fulfillment keeps its characters, adapted from Ann Brashares’s novels, at a studious distance from brute reality. That’s because “Traveling Pants 2,” directed by Sanaa Hamri from a screenplay by Elizabeth Chandler, knows its target audience — tweens and up — and would rather stroke romantic fantasies than dash them. Observed through emotional gauze, its four likable women are symbolic cheerleaders for personal loyalty and wholesome living. Their boyfriends are the stuff of girlish fantasy: tender, unspoiled dreamboats with sculpted abs (over which the camera lingers), puppy dog eyes, hearts of gold and well-scrubbed vocabularies.

All four are potential high achievers. Bridget (Blake Lively), who has won a scholarship to Brown, goes to Turkey for the summer on an archaeological dig and, with the help of a wise, earthy professor (Shohreh Aghdashloo), begins coming to terms with her mother’s suicide. She eventually visits Alabama to reunite with her grandmother (Blythe Danner, playing a salty Southern matron). Bridget is the only one of the four without a boyfriend.

Lena (Alexis Bledel), recovering from ruptured first love with her Greek sweetheart, Kostos (Michael Rady), is studying drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design and has a romance with Leo (Jesse Williams), a handsome artist’s model and amateur chef.

Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), who is studying film at New York University and working in a video store, is thrown into a tailspin after sleeping with her boyfriend, Brian (Leonardo Nam), and missing her period. Moody and wisecracking, she has the most personality of the four. When a young couple visits the store looking for something romantic, her boss overhears her sarcastically recommending “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Carmen (America Ferrera), a lonely Yale student, tags along after her friend Julia (Rachel Nichols), a drama major, to a summer theater in Vermont, where she does backstage work until she is pressured to audition for a production of “The Winter’s Tale,” in which she is cast as Perdita. She has a crush on Ian (Tom Wisdom), a courtly, handsome young British actor. Ms. Ferrera may be adorable in “Ugly Betty,” but her facility with Shakespeare is another matter.

The movie hopscotches haphazardly from one story to the next, connecting the friends through the same pair of magical, one-size-fits-all patched jeans that they pass around and that originally bound them. Each time the jeans change hands, they confer blessings.

In the three years since the first “Traveling Pants” movie, the balance of celebrity power has shifted among the stars. In 2005 Ms. Tamblyn and Ms. Bledel were riding high from the series “Joan of Arcadia” and “Gilmore Girls.” Because of “Ugly Betty” and “Gossip Girl,” Ms. Ferrera and Ms. Lively have pulled ahead.

If an unspoken rule among the sisterhood is never to poach on a friend’s romantic territory, it doesn’t apply to their other friends and relatives. It falls to Ms. Nichols to play the movie’s designated blond baddie, a cold, arrogant vixen who tries to undermine Carmen’s triumphs in romance and onstage.

But “Traveling Pants 2” has little appetite for viciousness. It would rather impart the positive life lessons summed up by its characters in two-sentence sound bites than wallow in cutthroat competition, treachery and revenge.

“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” isn’t entirely a mean-girl-free zone, but you have the sense that it would like to be.

The movie is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has one mild love scene.

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2

Opens on Wednesday nationwide.

Directed by Sanaa Hamri; written by Elizabeth Chandler, based on the novels by Ann Brashares; director of photography, Jim Denault; edited by Melissa Kent; music by Rachel Portman; production designer, Gae Buckley; produced by Debra Martin Chase, Denise Di Novi, Broderick Johnson and Kira Davis; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes.

A version of this review appears in print on , on page E7 of the New York edition with the headline: Four Jills in Jeans (One Pair) Go to College, Find Romance (or Not), Stay Connected. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe